You don't know how much this helps newbies (or maybe you do now that I'm pointing it out hahah xD)

But in all seriousness, I didn't know about how the payouts worked, and now that you mention focusing on the new posts it makes sense, because early commenting can better expose your blog if you're new and also because upvoting newer posts will give you the curation rewards (I just learned about that as well heheh)

Thank you very much for the advise.